Dark Days
by skullcandy216
Summary: Humans fear us. They pretend we don't exist, dismiss us as a conspiracy theory, a hoax. They refuse to accept the truth, that we do exist, that we are real, because they fear what we can do. Born in captivity. Raised underground. Altered. Mutated. They call us metahumans, individuals with altered genes in possession of unique abilities. And we're done hiding.
1. Prologue

**PROLOGUE**

My parents think I'm dead.

Obviously I'm _not_ dead, but it's better for them to think so. If they think I'm dead, they won't expect me to come home, won't be waiting for a status report on my 'condition', one that will never arrive. They can grieve, throw me some kind of funeral, cry a little, and move on. It's better they believe whatever bull the government feeds them.

_Kat was unable to recover from her illness, died on the operating table blah blah blah._

No one really cares.

My point is that my mother and father think I kicked the bucket years ago, just after I'd been brought to N.O.W.H.E.R.E. And I'd like to keep it that way.

Because they wouldn't like the person—the _thing_—I am now. I'm not their daughter. I'm a weapon, a monster, a _freak_ created by the sickest, darkest, most disturbing parts of scientific curiosity.

They call us metahumans. Individuals with altered genetics in possession of unique abilities. Sounds cool when you say it like that, don't it? But the truth of the matter is this: we're broken. Normal kids who didn't do a single thing wrong, 'cept for maybe being born into the wrong kind of family. Orphans, gutter rats, lower-lower-_lower_-middleclass kids. All us sorry suckers who no one would outwardly miss. We were the ones picked up by N.O.W.H.E.R.E. Most were just yanked up off the streets, thrown into the back of a truck and hauled off to an underground lab. Others, like me, were infected with a type of 'virus' bred in a Petri dish that only a super special (not to mention _experimental_) cure could combat. Us kids were taken away in ambulances by smiling doctors in crisp, official-looking scrubs that radiated'_I know what I'm doing_.' And once that ambulance turned the corner, we were tossed off of our gurneys, detached from our IV's and piled on top of each other in buses on a one way trip to Shitsville USA.

Population: 'bout 3,000 of us Frankenkiddies a piece.

Multiply that by 50 states, take into account how huge most of them are (ergo multiplying your answer by two, and add an extra three for Texas) and you've got a whole load of '_metahumans'_ to play with.

I'm not telling you this because I'm trolling for pity. I'm telling you this as a _warning_.

Not a warning against the science-ey nutcases who may or may not want to abduct you.

I'm warning you about us.

We're dangerous. We're deadly. And we hide in plain sight. We look like you, we talk like you. We sleep and eat and breathe like you. But we are different. We're _more_ than human. Meta, y'know?

So if anything I tell you seems familiar, if you come across someone you recognise, _stop_. Stop, and _never_ get involved in this.

Because if you come home, and a level 5 burned your house to the ground…don't say I didn't warn you.

My name is Katy Everett.

You can call me Blue.

I've always found that reading is a lot like hallucinating.

So, hallucinate this…

* * *

**Hallo!  
Sew, this is a re-upload of an older story that I kind of abandoned, but now I've gotten re-motivated to write. New material will start soon, so if this is a reread for you, just be patient, 'kay?  
Reviews are much loved, so go ahead, if you are so inclined!  
TTFN  
-Luna**


	2. Chapter 1

**N.O.W.H.E.R.E. BASE OF OPERATIONS—NORTHERN DIVISION**

**FEBRUARY 6 2013**

**04:32 UTC**

The sharp buzz of the electric razor pierced the quiet around me, slicing through the silence like a knife through skin. And honestly, I didn't know why I was crying. Maybe it was a girl thing—being emotionally attached to your hair—because as I watched ringlet after dark ringlet fall to the floor a wave of gut wrenching sense of loss washed over me. As if I'd lost a limb, not a clump of follicles and protein. Fat tears dribbled down my cheeks in a manner that can only be described as dismal, and I couldn't stop the low whimper that clawed its way out of my throat as the doctor shaving me jerked my head to the side (with far more force than was actually necessary).

I could tell from her frigid movements alone that she wanted to be anywhere else but here, so I decided to avoid looking at her face. I didn't want to see the hatred that burned there, the disgust. Out 'doctors' spoke with us freely, touched us too, but their eyes were always glossed with a sheen of revulsion and loathing that never seemed to fade. We were something nasty, something wrong.

The fact that we were what we were because of _them_: irrelevant.

"You're done." she grunted once the last chunk had drifted to the ground. I stood stiffly, stepping over the mass of chocolate coloured curls, cringing as a few strands slipped between my toes. She strode across the room with fast, determined steps, and motioned mechanically for me to follow. I did, praying to every god I could think of to smite me where I stood. My fingers wandered reflexively to the inhibitor collar around my neck, recalling the pain it caused when activated.

The steel slab that operated as a door to the laboratory whizzed open with a hiss of compressed air, and the stench of antibacterial sprays and rubber hit me like a slap, stinging my nose and lacing my tongue. The entire room was blindingly white. White walls, white countertops. White machines, white equipment, white lab coats. Even the doctors bustlingly about looked white, their skin covered by latex gloves and surgical masks. The only splash of colour was a blue chair situated in the middle of the room. One you'd expect to see in a dentist sugary.

Except, of course, for the restraints.

I stood there in the entryway, shoulders hunched, shivering with both terror and cold, the indoor air caused by moving bodies biting into my bare shoulders and legs. I remained there, as still as a statue. I didn't dare wipe away the tearstains on my cheeks, or fiddle with the hem of my tank top. I thought that maybe-_just maybe_-if I didn't move, I could blend into the whiteness and be forgotten about entirely, left alone in this big white lab.

No such luck.

A doctor made his way over to me, stopping just close enough that I felt uncomfortable, and snapped his fingers. I knew what he was asking of me, but still I remained motionless, my fingers curling into first at my sides. A small act of defiance. A stupid one.

He tutted impatiently, snapping his fingers again. "Tag". he sighed in a dramatically irritated way. I slowly raised my left arm, wincing as his fingers closed around my wrist. He held a small device (much like a chip and pin machine) against the serial number tattooed on the back of my hand. Beneath the number was another one, all on it's own. A **3** in thick print. My level.

There was a faint beep, and a light flashed green.

"10-02118" the doctor called, and my number relayed throughout the room as others tapped it into databases, scribbled it down on notebooks. My code. My I.D. number. That's all I was to these people, to _everyone_ outside of my hub. Seven numbers and a dash. No longer a thirteen year old girl with _real people_ emotions. Just a string of digits inked forever on my skin.

At a time, one of three hundred. Now, one of twenty.

For a deluded second, I thought that maybe I could leave then, that I was just doing to be tagged, not tested, and a small bubble of hope began to grow in my gut, no matter how silly I knew it was.

Stupid, _stupid_, **_stupid._**

Why did I keep getting my hopes up back then? Why did I bother having hopes at all?

Another doctor motioned for me to sit in the chair, reaching forward and hauling me when a flicker of resistance crossed my face. Panic rose in my chest as he fastened the ties around my wrists and ankles tight, painfully so. Another thick Velcro strap pinned down my midsection, and finally a pulse meter was clipped onto my right middle finger. My breath came in rapid pants as a shining aluminium headset was lowered onto my bare scalp, the cold metal stinging my naked flesh harsher than any burn. The doctor slipped a long, wicked looking needle beneath my skin, just between my number and my level, and the numbing agent went to work instantly. The stink of disinfectant and the white glare dulled, as if a volume knob had been jerked down. My senses lessened one by one, and the feeling left my arm inch by inch until my entire left side tingled with happy pins and needles. A delicious fog coated my mind like a warm blanket, banishing all thoughts and ill wishes. My body slumped bonelessly in my restraints, and I'm pretty positive I sighed.

_This is nice_, I thought. _Tickly_.

At that moment, I didn't care what they did to me. Not feeling an inch of myself was so great, so fantastic, that the doctors could've done whatever they wished to my body and I wouldn't have given a damn. The numbness—the nothing—was too perfect. Everything was so peaceful…so relaxed.

Then a sudden thought hit me.

First step in administering a lethal injection: numbing.

Blind hysteria flooded my veins, biting back against the clouds muddling my brain. My mind cleared —a small amount—and realisation came crashing down, a siren in the back of my being screaming 'YOU'RE ABOUT TO DIE!' I jerked helplessly against my restraints, the fabric cutting into my skin again and again until blood was surely drawn. My sight and hearing were the next to kick back in, though not nearly enough, and I heard someone shout. The next thing I registered was shear agony, a pulse of lightning injected straight into my bloodstream, and it took a full half-minute to realise my collar had shocked me. I must have screamed, or cried, or just whimpered, but if I did I couldn't have known. I collapsed in on myself again, shaking all over with residual charge. My collar was set at a level three times as high as the others were. My 'power' called for extra juice.

This may just be my personal bias, but I still think the doctors overdid it.

A hand on my chin snapped my head up, and this time I did hear myself mewl like a frightened cat. The very same doctor who had injected me stared down with cold, unrelenting eyes. His surgical mask had been yanked down, revealing a thin lipped sneer, deep frown lines and an unattractive adult brace.

"When will you _freaks_ learn to stay down." he snarled, flecks of spit dotting my cheeks. If I'd had the strength, I would have gagged. He jerked his hand away with a painful jolt of my jaw, sitting back into his swivel chair. My eyes were at half mast, the aftershocks still vibrating through my limbs.

_Okay, you can give me the second injection._

"Any indication as to why 10-02118 reacted to the morphalthene so severely?" a voice called out. "Does it have a morphine allergy?"  
_  
It? How _fucking_ thoughtful._

"Allergies are listed as pollen and strawberries." another voice answered the last.

"Simply an overreaction." my doctor assured the others. "The subject must have resisted the effects of the pain reliever and suffered unpleasant side effects. It's a possibility."

More was said, more I didn't bother listening to. My head hurt too much. I wanted to cry, but no tears came. I wanted to scream—roar, really—but my throat was a constricted steel cable. No sounds came when I opened my mouth. So instead, I chose to think.

I'd never asked why I had been taken down to the labs, and no one had bothered to tell, so my appointment could have been for anything. The numbing agent, the doctor had called it morphalthene. So either I was about to be operated on (and so painkillers were necessary), or the drug was a new prototype that needed testing. Though they wouldn't have to shave my head for that. If they were going to kill me, they would've left me with my hair as well. And honestly, they'd probably go with a less humane tactic if they wanted any of us Frankenkiddies dead.

Death by starvation, or killer infection…or firing squad.

Something crappy like that.

As I sagged in the chair, tears burning in the backs of my eyes, a needle was rammed into the back of my neck. I cried out, thrashing forwards as my muscles seized, contracting painfully. Seconds later, I couldn't move at all, my limbs turned to lead alongside me. A hand on my shoulder settled me back against the blue cushions, tightened my restrains and the strange headset.

"Remove the collar." I heard someone say, and I couldn't help the flutter my heart gave. _I could escape. I could break out of this stupid chair, this lab. I could make it to sublevel six and get the others and we could leave-_

The metal clasps on the front of my collar broke apart with a feeble clink, and I gave my shoulders an experimental jostle.

Nothing.

Escape plan foiled.

The pair of hands working behind me flipped a switch at the back of my headset and a bright blue light shone over my eyes, accompanied by a low hum of an engine at work. The headset moved slowly, the light trailing around my skull, stopping every three seconds to push into the skin experimentally. I waited, breathing deeply to try and slow my racing heart. To no apparent avail.

The blue light stopped just left of the base of my skull, pushing inwards with more pressure then it had before. It squeezed in with crushing force, the stomach turning sound of grinding bone filling my ears, and the smell of charred skin met my nostrils. I would have gagged, if I could move.

When the pressure dissipated, leaving behind a strange smell and a sense of utter relief (and no pain—the morphine hybrid must have done its work), I felt something cold against the same spot.

Droplets of a mystery liquid (blood. Mystery solved) trailed down the back of my head, down my neck and under the collar of my tank top, slipping in between my shoulder blades and collecting in the fabric of my standard-issue sports bra (the one all the girls were handed when they realised we wouldn't stay ten and flat forever). Seconds turned into minutes, which may have turned into hours for all I knew. Time slowed to a glacial drip as different tools and instruments—each fiercer than the last—were passed to the doctor working away at the back of my head, until the very idea of time moving seemed ridiculous.

Finally, the whir of the machine stopped, the horrible vibrations drifted away, and a little pen light was shone first into one eye, then the other. Doctors bustled around me—four now, wandering around with bloody scalpels and rags. I caught a flash of silver being passed from one hand to another, given to the doctor behind me, and with a disgusting squelch whatever s/he held was pushed against the wound.

"Circuit in place." a voice called out. "Prepare for trial examination."

"Trial examination prepped and ready. Subject 10-02118 was been equipped for long term electrical current storage."  
_Current storage?_

The lab buzzed with conversation and shouted orders as people jogged from machine to machine, flipping switches and turning knobs. I sat and watched helplessly as a huge lumbering device was wheeled in front of my chair. Wires and tubes were transferred from it to be, a dozen sharp needles sliding under my skin. my pulse meter was hooked up to the machine with a thin cable and another one—almost as thick as my fingers—was threaded behind me and _screwed_ into the back of my skull. Whatever had been stuck there kept it in place, allowed it to be fed in and fastened. The whole process turned my stomach.

"Trial commencing." The doctor in front of me called to the others. He had a weedy voice, quiet and un-commanding, and had to shout his order three times before he was heard. The bodies crowding around me hurried away, disappearing behind doors and screens. The lights were switched off, leaving me alone with the blinking glow of the device in front of me. It was nothing fancy, and reminded me of the X-ray machine. The lines across the green screen shot up in little triangles along with the beat of my heart, while underneath codes and sequences flittered about too fast for me to read. I spent too horrible heartbeats waiting for something to happen, waiting for whatever 'trial' to just up and start already.

And when it did, I could never have prepared for it.

A familiar pressure started building in my chest as the machines flashing lights went wild. I hadn't _called_ on my powers, but even so the cable connected to my skull seemed to vibrate as the first crackle of electricity flew from my fingertips. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to force the current away. The atmosphere around me sizzled with energy, thin bolts of lightning lifting from my skin, coiling like snakes. What was the point of this? What was the _point_?

A dull ache started behind my eyes, spreading like wildfire through my limbs until pain was all I was anymore. Stars exploded behind my closed lids, a scream trapped in my throat. Tremors shook not just me anymore, but the whole lab, maybe even the whole compound. I didn't care anymore.

Blackness fought against the blue, clawing its way across my vision until it finally won out.

* * *

I didn't remember falling asleep; only waking. Of course I did—I was shaking so hard I would've rolled right off the bunk if a pair of strong arms hadn't caught me. I cracked my eyes open, blurry vision revealing nothing but blobs. I was rolled back onto the squeaking mattress, my head reeling with the motion until my lids snapped shut again.

"She looks green." a familiar voice murmured. "Someone get her a puke bucket."

"Not gonna puke." I tried to say, though my lead tongue turned it into more of a '_nrggglpeugh'_.

"What was that?" a male tone this time, high and hysterical. "Is she awake? Is she _alive_? Oh God, Bee, she looks so _bad_. What if she dies? She looks dead already! I can't handle Blue dying. I just ca—"

"Shut _up_, Levi." Bee snarled, and I couldn't help but smile. "She's not dead. She's _breathing_, and last time I checked dead people don't breath." My eyelids fluttered open less violently this time, and I looked up at Bee's scowling face, a sneer contorting her features.

"Not dead." I promised, my voice weak and raw and hoarse, though my words earned an appreciative squeal and a scamper. Suddenly Levi's grinning face had replaced Bee's, his dark ponytail flying behind him.

"You're alive!" he hollered, collapsing on top of me in a makeshift hug. The impact hurt, and I was reminded for the first time of how much pain I was in.

"Not for long if you don't back the fuck off." Bee growled, grabbing him by his shirt collar and yanking him away. I turned my head slowly and watched as she pulled him to the other end of the room, dumping him on the concrete floor in a little heap, right beside his bunk. "Now stay there until I tell you to move."  
"You're not my mom." Levi grumbled weakly.

"She's as good as." My eyes trailed to the bunk next to mine, were the others were all piled, gazing at me expectantly. Ivy tumbled onto the floor and crawled over to me, sitting back on her heels and regarding me thoughtfully with her wide brown eyes.

"Wah happened?" I slurred as she reached up and placed a small hand against my forehead. It really was amazing, how small she was. Eleven years old and still scraping 4'5.

"You shorted out the West Wing." came Bee's reply. She stood propped against the wall between the two bunks, arms folded across her chest. Speechless stood, nudging Nightmare from his lap as he did so. "Every light that side over shut down, floors four to fourteen."

"Really?" I asked, ignoring Ivy's wandering fingers as she took my pulse, poked my cheeks, placed her ear against my chest to hear my heartbeat. "I'm not strong enough for that."

"Well you are now!" Levi called happily from the other end of the room.

"Did I _say_ you could talk?" Bee demanded.

"You never said I _couldn't_ talk." he retorted, yanking the rubber band out of his hair, letting the long mess spring free of its hold. He pulled it all out of his face and tied it up again. I never understood why he didn't just hack it off like Speechless and Nightmare did, but every time the topic of cutting his hair arose Levi tended to react by locking himself in the bathroom until we let the matter drop.

"Well," Bee sighed, regarding him with weary eyes. "I'm saying it now, so shut up."

"Don't be mean to Levi." Nightmare murmured, so quietly there was no way Bee could have heard it. If she did, she ignored him, which wasn't readily uncommon. Ivy clicked her fingers in front of my face. When I raised an eyebrow, she simply demanded I follow her finger with my eyes while she moved it about. I completed the task to her satisfaction, and allowed Bee and Speechless to prop me upright so I wasn't staring up everyone's nose.

"So," I continued once my head had quit spinning, the dank cement walls of our hub blurring into focus. "has the power come back on in the West?"  
"Yeah." Bee grunted, dragging a hand through her short, blond locks. "Not long after they brought you back here, all the lights switched on again. Couldn't've been out longer then twenty minutes. Still…" She trailed off, letting her eyes fall to the grubby ground beneath her bare feet. The others did the same.

"What?" I asked. "Did something happen?" It was Ivy I turned to, glaring at her downturned eyes until she finally flicked them up to meet mine. And in that one look, one filled with sadness and regret, I understood. "When the collars switched off in the West Wing…they fought, didn't they?" I didn't want to hear their reply, because I already knew the answer would be yes. The West Wing housed all the remaining level 4 kids (apart from Bee and Speechless), and were by far the most violent of us Frankenkiddies. They had the most security, each with an inhibitor collar _and_ a personal guard. I only knew a few by name, but all eight of their faces flashed through my mind at that moment.

Rule number 1 here at N.O.W.H.E.R.E.; you don't try to escape.

If you do, you die.

"Any survivors?" I mumbled. Heads shook all around me, and I think I heard Levi sniffle from the corner. "All because of me."  
"No!" Bee shouted, her head snapping up, a sudden blind fury clouding her sea green eyes. "Don't you dare blame this on yourself. You wouldn't have caused the powercut if those labcoat freaks hadn't done this to you!"  
"Done what to me?" I asked, her words knotting in my stomach. Bee's face fell, her anger washing away as quickly as it had risen, replaced by a wanton sadness and pity. "What did they do?"  
"Your head." Ivy said lowly, gesturing with a feebly flick of your wrist. "They…your head."

I reached up with a heavy hand, my fingers meeting first my hairless scalp, my long corkscrew curls replaced by a light peach fuzz. I trailed my fingertips across my temple, behind my ear until I met the soft cotton of a bandage.

"There's no cut but-" Ivy cut herself off, taking a raged breath. "I wrapped it anyways, in case you didn't want to see it." My fingers traced the edges of the bandage. It was huge, covering most of the back of my skull.

"Show me." I almost growled, my voice taking on the same deathly edge Bee's usually carried. "Get me a mirror. I want to see." Speechless pushed himself off the wall, giving me a small smile as he shuffled over to our small bathroom. It was a tiny space—broom closet small—with a toilet, a sink, and a cracked and shattered mirror. I heard the scrape of glass on stone, and soon Speech reappeared, a large shard of glass in each of his hands. He kicked Levi lightly on his way over, his way of telling the other boy he was being silly for following Bee's orders. Levi stood stiffly, taking one of the shards and trotting over to stand behind my bunk.

Speechless reached us and kneeled in front of me. He smiled—one of those big, warm smiles that he was so damn good at—and it made my heart hurt a little, seeing the worry in his bright blue eyes. Sometimes I hated that he couldn't talk, that _he_ had been the one robbed of speech, because I just knew that he would always know just the right thing to say. He was by far the kindest of the kids in our hub. He was the only one who always listened to Nightmare's whispers, who paid attention to Levi's rants, who could reign in Bee's temper when she went off on one. Speechless was the Momma Bear of the North Wing. And the way he looked at me now, eyes heavy with a special kind of sympathy, made me want to cry.

He held up the mirror, an almost perfect rectangle with a chunk missing from the corner. I stared back at me. My dark skin looked like wax, covered in a sheen of sweat and grossness. My usually full lips looked pinched and thin, my high cheekbones giving me a starved look. My eyes were sunken in, though their unnatural electric-blue colour was as obnoxiously bright as ever, so much so that it kind of hurt. And my head.

My head was naked.

I looked like hell—shit, really. I didn't know what could possibly make my appearance any worse, but even then a million possibilities swam through my mind as Ivy reached up and removed the bandage. Levi's face appeared in the mirror, and slowly he raised his own, the back of my head coming into view.

A blue circuit board, strung through with lighter blue patterns, covered the base of my skull. A metallic silver imitation of a spinal cord ran down from that, disappearing under the collar of my grubby tank top. And spidering out in hairline cracks from the panel and the spine were thin black lines, each ending in a little circle.

"I'm a robot?" My voice sounded off, disconnected from my body.

"Well, not yet." Bee murmured. "They've only started their work."

"And the correct term is actually cyborg." Levi interjected.

My gaze trailed to her, to the hard set of her jaw, to the cold fury burning in her eyes. She was trembling, barely contained rage sending tremors through her body. If not for her inhibitor collar, she would have already sent a chair through the door.

"I'm…a robot." I repeated, the words bouncing straight off my brain. "Like, with robot organs and stuff?"  
"We don't know." Bee sighed. "Maybe."

I nodded once, slowly, and reclined against the mound of pillows supporting my back. I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath.

Don't panic. Do. Not. Panic.

"Is she dead?" Levi squeaked.

I panicked.

And in my panic, I tumbled straight off the bunk and chinned its metal frame, knocking myself unconscious.

* * *

**Thanks for all the reviews everyone! New material coming up next :3**


	3. Chapter 2

**AN: Hola! Finally, the start of the _actual _new stuff! Thanks to piggythelaw and thunderman24 for reviewing. Much love guys, much love!**

**Note: this story has two seperate timelines, one in 2011 and one in 2014. Mind the time stamps and enjoy!**

* * *

**N.O.W.H.E.R.E. BASE OF OPERATIONS—NORTHERN DIVISION**

**MARCH 19 2011**

**21:32 UTC**

It rained the day they brought us the N.O.W.H.E.R.E. Freezing rain, the kind that would have been snow if it had been five degrees colder. I remember watching the drops trace frantic paths down the length of the school bus window. If I had been back at home, inside one of my parent's cars, I would have followed the drops' swerving route across the cold glass with my fingertips. Now, my hands were tied together behind my back, and the men in grey uniforms had packed four of us to a seat. There was barely room to breath.

This would be the last time I'd see the rain for years to come.

I wasn't aware of that at the time, obviously. All I was aware of was the vile stench of sweat and urine, clinging to my skin, lacing my tongue. The boy further along my seat had pissed his pants. The guards refused to let him use the bathroom, even after he'd begged them for hours, and finally he'd broken down into silent sobs and soiled himself. The girl wedged between us squirmed away, digging her elbow into my thigh in her efforts to get away as I leaned forward. He was older then me—twelve, maybe thirteen—and a steady stream of tears poured down his cheeks, eyes clouded with shame. The guard closest grimaced as the sickly sweet smell wafted into the air, edging away from our seat in disgust.

I was closest to the window on the five-hour drive, so I could make out silvers of the passing landscape whenever the fog of a hundred-odd had cleared itself from the windows. It all looked so alien—green farms, thick expanses of trees. The gloom and grit of Blüdhaven long gone. It was seedy, all of the filth and none of the glitz of some of its neighbours. In the late summer, it stank of brine and sweat and garbage, the kind of thick artificial pollution that could choke someone to death. Never in my life did I think I would miss it. I doubted I was alone. I think all of the kids with me were from the 'Haven, but there was no way to be sure, because there was only one big rule: _silence_.

After they had picked me up from my apartment block the day before, they'd kept me, along with the rest of the kids, in some kind of warehouse overnight. The room was washed in unnatural brightness, three floodlights pointed at us while we huddled in a group on the dirty cement floor. We weren't allowed to sleep. My eyes watered so badly from the dust that I couldn't see the pale, clammy faces around me, let alone the faces of the guards keeping us at gunpoint, standing just beyond the ring of lights. In the sickly haze of half sleep, I didn't see them as people anymore, but processed them in frightening fragmented visions: the reek gunpowder, the metallic glint off the barrel of a rifle, a boot in my side, forcing me awake.

We stayed there, shivering, sniffling and utterly pathetic until morning.

The next morning, the ride had been completely silent, save for the crackles of the soldier's radios and kids crying towards the back of the bus. I asked the guard closest to me when we would be allowed to eat—most of us hadn't touched a bite all day—and her gloved hand connected with my cheek with a dull chunk. My skin burned from the slap, but I refused to let my lip tremble, though I couldn't stop the water that blurred my vision.

I flexed my feet against the sticky floor, trying to keep my legs still. Hunger was making my head feel fuzzy, but it was nothing I wasn't used to. It was hard to focus, and harder to sit still. I felt like shrinking back into the seat and disappearing completely. My fingertips had long since lost feeling, having been bound behind me for hours, and I wondered if they had turned the same frightening blue as those of the girl beside me. Trying to stretch the Ziploc tie they'd fastened them did nothing but cause the plastic to deeper into my skin. I felt blood trickle slowly down from my wrists before long.

The bus took a deep dip as it pulled off the narrow road onto a smaller dirt one. The new vibrations woke whoever had been exhausted enough to sleep. They also sent the grey-clad guards into action. The men and women stood straighter, rifles hoisted higher, snapping to attention.

I saw the towering fence first. The darkening sky cast everything in a moody, deep blue. But not the fence. It practically glowed silver, luminous as the wind whistled through its open pockets. The guard in the control booth at the gate stood and saluted the driver as he navigated past them.

The bus lurched to a stop, and no one dared move as the gates slammed shut behind us. The locks cracked through the silence like thunder as they came together again. We were the first busload, but we were in no way the last. Bus' would arrive for another year, until the facility simply couldn't house us all, even with the death rate sky high.

There was a prolonged moment of stillness before a soldier in a blue rain poncho rapped on the bus door. The driver reached over and pulled the leaver—ending anyone's hope hat this was a short pit stop.

The guard was massive—Andre the Frickin' Giant massive—and he kept his hood up, hiding his face, hair, and anything else that would deem him recognizable. I guess it didn't matter who he was. He wasn't speaking for himself. He was speaking on behalf of N.O.W.H.E.R.E.

"You will stand an exit the bus in an orderly fashion." he boomed. I flinched, his deafening voice sounding right beside my seat. "You will be divided into groups of ten and escorted into the facility for tagging and testing. Do not try to run. Do not speak. Do not do anything other than what is asked of you. Failure to follow these instructions will be met with severe punishment."

At ten, I was one of the youngest kids on the bus, though there were certainly a few younger. Most seemed to be twelve, even thirteen. The hate and distain in the soldiers eyes might have shrunken my spine, but it only sparked rebellion in the older kids.

"Go fuck yourself!" someone yelled from the back of the bus.

We all turned at once, just in time to see the soldier that had slapped me launch the butt of her rifle into the teenage girl's mouth. She let out a grunt of pain and surprise as the soldier did it again, and I saw a faint spray of blood from her mouth as she took her next angry breath. With her hands behind her back, there was no way she could fight. She just had to take it.

The venom in her gaze told me it was the last thing she wanted to do.

They began moving us off the bus—one row of four at a time. But I was still watching that kid, the way she seemed to cloud the air around him with silent, toxic fury. I don't know if she felt me staring or what, but the girl turned her eyes to me and met my gaze. She nodded, like an encouragement. And when she smiled, it was around a mouthful of bloody teeth.

I felt myself being dragged up out of my seat, and almost before I realized what was happening, I was slipped down the wet bus steps and tumbling into the pouring rain. A new soldier lifted me off my knees—not gently—and guided me in the direction of a few other kids my age. Two boys, one other girl. Their clothes hung to them like old skin, translucent and drooping. They were all crying. I wanted to slap them, tell them to toughen up and stop being such babies. It occurred to me that it would probably make them cry harder, so I held my tongue.

There were nearly twenty guards on the ground, swarming us as we filled into lines. My feet had completely been swallowed by the mud, and I was shivering in my threadbare pyjamas. No one took notice. No one came to cut the plastic ties securing my wrists either. We waited, our tongues clamped between our teeth. I looked up at the murky clouds, turning my face to the pounding rain. It looked like the sky was falling, piece by piece.

The last groups of four were being lifted off the bus and dropped onto the ground—including the girl with the bloodied face. She was the last one off, behind two boys with sandy blond hair, huddled close together, one shielding the other from the cold. I could barely make them out through the sheets of rain, but what happened next is still as clear as day in my mind.

As the final quartet were broken up, the two boys who had been clinging to each other were wrenched apart. The younger of the two flailed and thrashed as he was dragged away from his brother, fighting to get back. The guard handling him had had enough, throwing him to the ground gruffly. The boy—easily no more then nine—shot to his feet inhumanly fast and sprinted back to his brother.

He didn't get far.

The guard closest pulled her rifle, aimed, fired.

I don't know if I screamed aloud, or if the strangled sound had come from the boy as the bullet lodged itself in his temple. The image of his face—his slack jaw, eyes bulging out of his skull, the ripple of suddenly loose skin—stayed burned into the air like a photonegative far longer than the explosion of pinky, misty blood and clumps of hair against the bus.

The kid standing next to me dropped into a dead faint, and then there wasn't one of us that wasn't screaming.

The boys brother screamed loudest.

He slammed himself into the guard that attempted to hold him back, fighting to get to the lifeless corpse, screaming in a language I didn't understand. It wasn't long before he was tackled into the mud.

"Per favore!" he yelled, struggling beneath the weight of the woman pinning him down. "Lasciami andare! Lui è mio fratello! _Per favore_!"

The rain washed the boy's blood down the bus window and yellow panels, stretching the bloated dark lines, drawing them out as they disappeared completely. It was that fast.

The girl was only looking at us. "_Run!"_ she yelled around her bloodied teeth. "What are you doing?_ Run—run!"_

And the first think that went through my head wasn't _What's happening?_ Or even _Why?_

It was _But I have nowhere else to go._

She might as well have blown up the entire bus for all the panic it caused. Some kids listened and tried to bolt for the fence, only to have their path blocked by the line of soldiers in black that seemed to pour out of the air. most just stood there and screamed, and screamed, and screamed, the rain falling all around, the mud sucking their feet down firmly in place. A girl knocked me down to the ground with her shoulder as the other guards rushed for the girl with the broken teeth, still standing in the bus doorway. The soldiers were yelling at us to sit on the ground, to stay frozen. I did exactly as I was told.

"Backup." I heard one of them yell into his walkie-talkie. "We have a situation at the main gate. I need restraint and a disposal team—"

It wasn't until they had corralled us again, or had the girl pinned to the ground beside the boy from before that I dared to look up.

I watched with a feeling of hollowness at the center of my chest as one of the soldiers took a can of spry paint in hand and drew a bright red X on the back of the girl's sweatshirt. She'd only stopped yelling because two guards had wrestled her into a strange black mask—like a dog's muzzle.

Tension beaded on my skin like sweat. They marched our lines through the camp toward the facility for sorting. We were hurried into the bright lights and dry air of what a torn paper sign had labelled THE INFIRMARY. The doctors and nurses lined the long hallway, watching us with frowns and shaking heads. The checkered tile floor became slick with rain and mud, and it took all my concentration not to slip. My nose was filled with the smell of rubbing alcohol and fake lemon.

We filed one by one down a dark cement staircase at the back of the first floor. And we went down, and down, and down.

The room we were finally stopped in was lined with empty beds and flickering lightbulbs. Here, they finally began cutting the plastic ties. The guard in charge of the task had just taken my hands in his grasp when he was interrupted.

"Wait," another soldier stopped him, moving her hand through the air, doing a headcount of the already freed kids. "Leave the rest. We're out of beds."

"Can't we just double them up?" the guard behind me asked.

"No." she replied firmly. I thought, for a moment, that she might be kind. That some of the enforcers might actually care about us. Then I recognised her, her flaming red hair and stocky build. She'd been the one to shoot the boy. "They each get their own beds tonight. Upstairs made that very clear. Just shove these three," She gestured to myself, a boy with dark brown hair and a Hispanic girl with lopsided pigtails. "into Recovery. It won't be used until tomorrow anyway."

With that, the three of us were guided back up two flights of stairs and down another long corridor. The soldiers brought us to a hospital ward lined with ten beds—five on each side—with two doors leading to God knows where on the back wall.

"You guys are lucky." the redhead told us as the male guard began removing medical apparatus from the bedside tables. "You've got your own en suite bathroom." She pointed to the leftmost door. "Shower stall's through there, but I don't think you'll get to use it tonight."

Why was she being nice to us? She'd just _killed_ a nine-year-old. How could she be anything but dead inside?

Our ties were cut, and bunks were assigned. The other girl collapsed onto her bed, and was asleep in seconds, exhaustion and fright dragging her into unconsciousness. The boy and I moved to our own beds as the guards left the room. I climbed up, nestled under the cardboard-like sheets. In that moment, I knew there was no way I would sleep.

After twenty minutes or so, a voice sliced through the silence.

"You asleep?" the boy whispered. I heard his mattress creak as he sat up.

"Nope." I whispered back, turning to face him.

"What's your name?" he asked. His dark eyes flashed, and when he spoke, I saw that they had cut the wires on his braces but had left the metal nubs glued to his front teeth.

"Katy. Yours?"

"Levi."

"Hi Levi."

"Hi Katy."

The casual normalcy of the conversation was as unsettling as it was awkward.

"Who sent you here?" Levi finally asked after a long stretch of silence.

"I caught the virus." I told him, sitting up and pulling my knees o my chest. "They collected me two days ago, said they had a cure. Which they did. But I overheard them talking to my mom and dad. Told them I'd gone tits up."

Levi nodded solemnly. "Same thing happened to me."

As the silence between us stretched out again, I studied him. He was probably a year or so older then me, with dark hair sweeping his shoulders, and a kind-of-feminine face. As he got older, this got worse. The funny thing about the kind of attractive Levi is is that if you catch him in a certain light, you'd think he was a girl. This is not a topic he particularly likes discussed.

We asked each other meaningless questions—where were we from, what pets we had, what grades we were in—until the door opened behind my back and we slammed against the pillows. I peeked through slit lids as the bloodied girl from before was escorted inside—still muzzled—followed by the boy who's brother had been…

Well, y'know.

Their ties were cut, muzzle removed, and bunks pointed out. With that, we were left alone once again. Levi and I sat up in tandem.

The blond boy—still caked heavily in mud—trudged past his assigned bed to the end of the row, farthest from anyone else. He hoisted himself up on the mattress stiffly, then turned to sit so his back was facing us. The girl turned to me and Levi and raised an eyebrow. Through her slightly parted lips, I caught a glimpse of her teeth. A huge chunk of her right incisor was nowhere to be seen.

"Either of you know him?" she asked. We both shook our heads. She sighed, her shoulders sinking slightly, before she sauntered off down the line of beds.

Levi and I glanced at each other, them climbed out of bed and followed. We stopped just beside his bunk, next to the girl.

"You're not from the States, are you?" she asked. The boy just stared, regarding us with mildly-frightened eyes. "Can you speak English?"

He nodded slowly.

"Mmkay, that's progress. What's your name?"

Silence.

"How did you get here?"

More silence.

"Do you plan on talking any time soon?" she asked, sounding annoyed.

_More_ silence.

"Fine, be like that, _Speechless_." She stalked off to her bunk and slid in, ignoring her bloody, mud-caked clothes. The three of us stared after her for a long time.

"Well, I'm Levi." Levi told the boy. "And this is Katy. You don't have to talk to us if you don't want." He paused for a minute, seemingly mulling something over. "That guy, he was your brother, right?"

The boy nodded again, pain flashing in his blue eyes.

"I'm sorry." I interjected. "Really, I am."  
"Me too." Levi added.

We decided when he didn't respond that it would be best to just leave him alone. We turned away, and just before we were out of earshot, the boy spoke.

"Elliott." he called after us. He looked back at us, knees clasped tight to his chest. "I'm called Elliott."

His accent was thick—probably European. He pronounced his name El-ee-oot, and the words crackled as they left his throat. Due to grief, fright, or puberty, I don't know.

"Nice to meet you Elliott." I said quietly, smiling. He smiled back, a slight upturn of his lip.

"Get to sleep." Came the girl's gruff voice. "Something tells me we have a long day tomorrow."  
"You're not our mom." Levi protested. The girl sat up, glaring at him with venomous eyes. He shrunk back, practically crawling to his bed. I followed suit, climbing back under the uncomfortable covers.

My head hit the pillow, and not long later I found sleep.

* * *

**Aaaaand viola!  
Just an FYI, updates will be every Saturday from now on.  
So, hope you enjoyed. If you did, then maybe review?  
TTFN  
-Luna**


	4. Chapter 3

**AN: Hey y'all! …okay, so apparently I'm Tyler Oakley now. Iono. Let's just run with it.  
****Anyways!  
****Thanks to ****piggythelaw, thunderman24, thebirdie, sass-mistress-lucifer, hyourin-kusabana and Guest for reviewing, and to everyone who read/favourited/followed since last time. Special thank you the bluepenguin1998—she knows why :3**

* * *

**N.O.W.H.E.R.E. BASE OF OPERATIONS—NORTHERN DIVISION**

**MARCH 20 2011**

**06: 02 UTC**

Sleep had been fitful, nightmares and memories shrouded into one as soldiers in grey marched past my closed eyelids, shooting into a crowd of kids as I sat by and watched. I woke with a sickening start in the dead of night, panting for air as gunshots rang in my ears. The darkness in the recovery room was all-encompassing—someone must have turned out the light—and in it I would remain for several hours more, shivering and panicked.

Come morning (or at least what we perceived as morning from our room underground) a flock of soldiers came to escort us upstairs. We were united with the other kids, only to be divided again, the guards sending half down to the right end of the freezing hallway and half to the left. Both sides looked exactly the same—no more than a few closed doors, and a small window at the very end. For a moment, I did nothing but watch the drizzle soak that tiny, foggy pane of glass. Then, the door on the left swung open with a low whine, and the face of a plump, middle-aged man appeared. He cast one look in our direction before whispering something to the guard at the head of the group. One by one, more doors opened, and more adults appeared. The only thing they had in common aside from their white coats was a shared look of suspicion.

Without a single word of explanation, the soldiers began pulling and pushing kids towards each white coat and its associated office. The outburst of confused, distressed noises that erupted from the lines was shushed with a piercing buzzer. I fell back onto my ass, watching the doors shut one by one, wondering if I would ever see those kids again.

My head felt like it was full of wet sand as I forced myself shakily to my feet.

I felt a hand slide into mine as I stood there, trembling hard enough for my joints to hurt. That girl—the same nameless, toothless girl—gave me a fierce look. Her light blond hair was plastered to her skull, face caked with dried blood and dirt from the day before. Her deep green eyes were steely, but not cold.

"Don't let them see." she whispered. "Don't let them see you're scared."

We stood shoulder to shoulder, close enough that our linked fingers were hidden between my pyjama bottoms and her oversized sweatshirt. Her fingernails were jagged against my palm, and our height difference meant she had to slouch.

The kids who had disappeared through the doors now came back through them, clutching grey sweaters and shorts in their hands. Instead of falling back into our line, they were marched right back downstairs before anyone could think to get a word or questioning look in. The only thing that looked anyway peculiar was the white bandage each of them had wrapped around their hand.

At least they didn't look hurt. No one was bleeding or crying.

When it was finally the girl's turn, the guard at the head of the line forced us apart with a sharp jerk. I wanted to go in with her, to face whatever was behind the door. Anything had to be better than being alone again without anyone or anything to anchor myself to.

My hands were shaking so badly I had to cross my arms and grip my elbows to get them to stop. I stood at the front of the line, looking at the gleaming span of checkered tile between the soldier's boots and my mud-splattered toes. I was already tired down to my bones from two practically sleepless nights in a row, and the scent of the soldier's boot polish sent my head spinning even faster.

And then they called me.

I found myself in a dimly lit office, half the size of my cramped bedroom at home, with no memory of having ever walked into it.

"Name?"

I was looking at a cot and a strange, halo-shaped grey machine hanging over it.

The white coat's face appeared from behind the laptop on the table. He was a frail-looking man, whose silver glasses seemed to be in danger of sliding off his nose with every movement he made. His voice was unnaturally high, and he didn't so much say the word as squeak it. I pressed my back against the cold steel door, trying to put some space between myself and the machine.

The man followed my gaze to the cot. "That's just a scanner. There's nothing to be afraid of."

I found that very, _very_ hard to believe.

My hesitance must have registered on my face, because he continued. "Have you ever broken a bone or bumped your head? Do you know what a CT scan is?"

His voice was patient, but I still didn't trust it. Welded firmly to the door, I shook my head.

"In a minute I'm going to have you lie down, and I'll use that machine to check to make sure your head is all right. But first, you need to tell me your name."  
_Make sure your head is all right?_ But, mine was—

"Your name." he said, the words taking on a sudden edge,

"Katy Everett." I answered, shifting forward a step, and I had to spell it out for him.

He began typing on the laptop, distracted for a moment. My eyes drifted back over to the machine, wondering how painful it would be to have the inside of your head inspected.

"Damn, they're getting lazy," the lab coat groused, more to himself than me. "Didn't they pre-classify you?"

I didn't know what the hell that was, so I just shrugged.

"When they picked you up, did they ask you questions?" he explained, standing. The room wasn't large by any means, and he was at my side in two steps. I was in full panic in two heartbeats. "Anything about your health, mental state, anything?"

"I don't know." I squeezed out. "They didn't ask me anything, but I'm not sick. I'm better. I'm not—"

He shook his head, looking more annoyed than anything else. "Calm down; you're safe here. I'm not going to hurt you." The white coat kept talking, his voice flat, reciting lines I had no doubt were practiced.

"We just need to make sure you're healthy, both physically and mentally." He explained, leaning down to look me in the eyes. All I could see were his crooked front teeth and the dark circles rimming his eyes. His breath smelled like coffee and spearmint. "If you're not fit enough for the testings, then things will get very ugly very fast. It's a safety precaution, that's all."

Testings?

_Testings?_

"Tell me, sweetheart, are you good at math? Machines? Do you like swimming? Sometimes your abilities are keyed in with your personality."

I remained silent, mind whirling a million miles a minute. What did he _mean_?

"All right," he said, taking a deep breath, clearly exasperated, "just lie back on that cot and we'll get started."

I didn't move.

Seriously, would _you_?

"Now," he repeated, moving towards the machine. "Don't make me call in one of the soldiers. They won't be nearly as nice as me, that I can assure you." A screen on the side panel came alive with a single touch, and then the machine itself lit up. At the centre of the grey circle was a bright white light, blinking as it set itself up for another test. It was breathing out hot air in sputters and whines that seemed to prick every pore on my body.

My back was flat against the door again, my hand blindly searching for the handle. Every single lecture my mom had ever given me about strangers seemed to be coming true. This was not a safe place. This man was not nice.

I was shaking so hard, he might have thought I was going to faint. That, or he was going to force me onto the cot himself and hold me there until the machine came down and locked over me.

I hadn't been ready to run before, but I was now. As my fingers tightened on the door handle, I felt his hand push through my unruly mass of dark hair and seize the back of my neck. The shock of his freezing hand on my flushed skin made me flinch.

He dragged me over to the cot and bodily flung me under the machine. Panic clamped hard on my chest as the grey circle lowered itself slowly over my head, encompassing me in its blinding white light.

"Do try to relax," the man said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "The results are clearer that way."

I wanted to scream, thrash and kick and demolish everything in arms reach, but with a sudden flash of red light, followed by green and back to white, all thoughts of escaping wafted away. I squeezed my eyes shut to combat the pressure rising in my head. A low whine rose from the machine, a buzzing that made my ears pop.

"Now," the man sighed as the machine lifted away from my face. "That wasn't so bad, now was it?"

"That's it?" I asked, swinging my legs over the side of the cot. No way could that be all they had in store.

"Yes, that's it." He rolled his eyes dramatically. "All that's left to do is administer your tag." He took a small device from beside his laptop, a square screen with small buttons along the side. "Give me the hand that you write with."

Hesitantly, I held out my left hand, his frail fingers circled my wrist fully, and I pulled back slightly from his grip, but it was vice-tight. He lowered the machine against the back of my hand, and after a moment a sharp stinging began. I winced as pinpricks danced across my hand.

When the white coat lifted the square away, a small black tattoo remained on my dark skin. A number.

10-02118

"What's that?" I croaked, rubbing the mark in an attempt to smudge it. nothing.

"Your I.D. number." he deadpanned, picking up a grey uniform and handing it to me. "Gives your age, batch and subject number."

That didn't sound good. That didn't sound good at all.

It'll be okay, I told myself as I walked back down the cold hallway, down the steps, to the girls and men in uniform waiting for me below. It wasn't until much later—when everything was well and truly underway—that I realized I would only ever get one chance to run, and I may have just wasted it.

* * *

**Bit shorter than usual, but this was the best place to end. Plus I've had a pretty taxing week, and writing wasn't my first priority (the tension of exam results SUCKS!)Next chapter will be longer, swearsies.  
****So, hope you enjoyed. Maybe leave a review letting me know watcha think, and I'll see you next week!  
****Bai!**


	5. Chapter 4

**AN: Haaaaai! A more well-rounded chapter this week, I think. Or at least, y'know, longer. So that's good, right?**

* * *

**N.O.W.H.E.R.E. BASE OF OPERATIONS—NORTHERN DIVISION**

**FEBRUARY 12 2014**

**09:14 UTC**

I slept for about three days, waking sporadically to prevent dehydration, before I finally came to. Ivy hovered over me for another two after that, checking my vitals more often than necessary—for her piece of mind rather then my own. The gang took turns giving me their meals from the mess hall and bringing them to our hub, me being too weak to climb the three flights of stairs and all. I didn't want them to baby me like this, but I knew protesting would amount to nothing but the occasional glare. They'd all had turns being pitied before. Now was just my turn.

Finally, six days after my 'surgery', Ivy decided I was well enough to venture upstairs. When the harsh fluorescent lights snapped on at 8 a.m. sharp, I hobbled out of bed with everyone else. I'd missed wash day (a ten-day rotation of five minute showers), so I reluctantly allowed a reluctant Bee to reluctantly give me a stand-me-up bath with an old shirt…which I'm sure wasn't all that thrilled either. Since our bathroom has no door, and our cell-like home is so small, every thirty seconds or so I'd have to cover my chest as one of the boys wandered past with they're eyes fixed on the ceiling.

We may _all_ be freaks of nature, but _some _of us were allowed to be modest.

Freshened, dried and thoroughly humiliated, I followed the other to the mess hall when our hub door slid open at eight thirty, a square of cloth covering my head as a makeshift bandana. Once I crossed the threshold, my inhibitor colour bleeped—the built in tracker kicking in. The Frankenkiddies were never given a chance to wander, but the white coats put precaution after precaution up in case we did.

The trek upstairs left me sweaty and winded. Three separate times Speechless offered to carry me—making a little clapping motion hard to misinterpret—and each time I shot him a glare so half-hearted it was embarrassing. Still, he left me alone, settling a hand on my elbow just in case. Once we reached the cafeteria, I slumped against the wall, struggling to catch my breath before Levi pushed the double doors open.

Clean square tables were spaced in three rows. Most of the ones up front were occupied, a sea of empties stretching behind them. When the N.O.W.H.E.R.E. base was built, it had been designed to hold hundreds of subjects. Three years ago, this cafeteria would have been jam-packed with almost 300 frightened kids fighting to keep down their measly helping of mushy oatmeal. Now, less than thirty squalid teens sat in groups of four or five, stabbing at trays of barely edible food with minimal interest. The low hum of conversation ground to an abrupt halt, all eyes trained on me.

Great.

Just. Fucking. Great.

Shoulders squared, chin high and sneer firmly in place, Bee grabbed my elbow, practically dragged me to our usual table and pushed me into the seat. Not a fan of being manhandles, I shot her a look.

"Stay here," she said, then spun on her heel.

Where the hell did she think I would go?

Speech pushed Nightmare and Ivy gently onto the bench, and motioned for Levi to follow him as he jogged after Bee. I watched him walk toward the front where a short line of people was waiting. Men and women in lab coats and fatigues milled around, none of them giving me more than a cursory glance as they passed by. I sat uncomfortably straight.

The others returned with trays of questionable eggs and bacon in each hand.

They set them down in front of us wordlessly, then produced a plastic forks and little cartons of sickly 'Just Add Water' milk. I stared at the plate as they eased onto the opposite side of the bench.

Eggs should never, _ever_ be grey.

We ate in comfortable silence, wolfing down the plastic-y food regardless of how bad it tasted. Hunger was as much a part of everyday life down here as misery and boredom.

"Quit it." Bee grumbled, spearing her bacon aggressively. I followed her gaze to Speechless, who was bending his plastic spork and ignoring his food. He flicked his gaze over to the right, then back to Bee. "I know they're staring. Just ignore them."

Speech pointed his utensil at me and shook his head.

"I know Blue didn't do anything wrong, genius. Tell that to _them_." Something flashed across Speech's eyes, making Bee wince at her choice of words. "Sorry, but you know what I mean."

His shoulders sank heavily.

"I _know_ it's not fair." Bee whispered sorrowfully. "What is?"

Bee was the best at talking to Speechless. Not because they were particularly close, but because they were particularly similar.

"Don't mind them, Blue." Levi told me. "They don't know what happened. How can they? The blackout wasn't your fault. Nothing that happened was your fault 'Kay?"

I nodded, but truthfully, I didn't believe a word.

* * *

Six months into life at N.O.W.H.E.R.E., the base controllers started working on the Factory. By that time, experimentation was well underway, and the dangerous ones had been hauled off in the night after failed 'rehabilitation'. Somewhere along the way, it dawned on them that the base needed to be entirely "self-sufficient". From that point on, we'd been growing and cooking our own food, mucking out the Washrooms, making our own uniforms, and even making theirs.

Different sections of the Factory covered different floors, and while construction was underway we watched it being built, floor by floor, wondering what it was for and what they would do to us there. That was back when all sorts of rumours were floating around like dandelion fluff in the wind—some thought the scientists were building newer, more elaborate torture chambers; some thought they were building cages for the fives, if and when they returned; and some thought it was where they were going to get rid of us, once and for all.

"We will be fine." Speechless had told me one night, just before they turned out the lights, back when he was still Elliott and fully capable of making noise. "No matter what—_va_ _bene_?" I remember nodding, and maybe—just maybe—believing that he was right.

But it wasn't fine. It wasn't fine then, and it wasn't fine now.

There was no talking in the Factory, but there were ways around it. I fact the only times we were allowed to speak to each other was at meals and in our hubs, before lights-out. Everywhere else, it was all work, obedience, silence. But you can't go on for years together without developing a different kind of language, one that was all sly grins and quick glances. Today they had the girls polishing and relacing the guard's boots and tightening their uniform buttons, but a single wiggle of a loose black shoelace and a look towards the girl standing across from you—the same girl who had called you an awful word the week before—could speak volumes.

The Factory wasn't much of a factory, but we could never think of a better name. A more accurate name would have been the Warehouse, only because the setup consisted of one huge room, with a pathway suspended over the work floor. The camp controllers tried to keep things as simple as possible; they set up rows and rows of tables lengthwise across the dusty concrete floor, able to fit hundreds. Ten soldiers patrolled the walkways above us, each with his or her own black rifle. Another ten were on the ground with us.

It was no more unnerving than usual to feel the press of their eyes coming from every direction. But after the week I'd had, and the bones of a headache pressing vice-tight on my temples, I wasn't feeling right. A glossy fever fog had snaked its way into my skin during the hours since breakfast. Even my fingers seemed lethargic, my fingers stiff as pencils. I knew I wasn't keeping up, but it was like drowning, in a way. The harder I tried to work, to keep my head above water, the more tired I felt and the slower I became. After a while, even standing upright was taking too much effort, and I had to brace myself against the table to keep from swan-diving straight into it. On most days, I could get away with a snail's pace. It wasn't like they had us doing important work, or that we had deadlines to meet. Every task we were assigned was just glorified busywork to keep our hands moving, our bodies occupied, and our minds dead with boredom. Bee called it "forced recess"—they let us out of our hubs, and the work wasn't difficult or tiring like Training or Testings, but no one wanted to be there.

Especially when bullies came to the playground.

I knew he was standing behind me long before I heard him start counting the finished, shiny shoes in front of me. he smelled like spiced meat and car oil, which already was an unsettling combination before a whiff of cigarette smoke was added to the mix. I tried to straighten my back under the weight of his gaze, but it felt life he had taken two fists and dug the knuckles deep between my shoulder blades.

"Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…" How was it that they could make mere numbers sound sharp?

At N.O.W.H.E.R.E, we weren't supposed to touch one another, and we were beyond forbidden to touch one of the guards, but it didn't mean they couldn't touch us. The man took two steps forward; his boots—exactly like the ones on the table—nudged the back of my standard black slip-ons. When I didn't respond, he snuck an arm past my shoulder, on the pretence of sorting through my work, and pressed me into his chest. _Shrink_, I told myself, curling my spine down, bending my face to the task in front of me, _shrink and disappear._

"Worthless." I heard the soldier grunt behind me. His body was letting off enough heat to warm the entire building. "You're doing this all wrong. Look—_watch_, girl!"

I got my first real glance at him out of the corner of my eye as he ripped the polish-stained cloth out of my hand and moved to my side. He was short, only an inch or two taller than me, with a stubby nose, and cheeks that seemed to flap every time he took a breath.

"Like _this_," he was saying, swiping at the boot he had taken. "_Look_ at me!"

A trick. We weren't supposed to look them directly in the eye, either.

I heard a few chuckles around me—not from the girls, but from more guards gathered at his back.

It felt like I was boiling from the inside out. It was February, and the Factory couldn't have been warmer than forty degrees, but lines of sweat were racing down the curves of my cheeks, and I felt a hard, stiff cough welling up in my throat.

There was a light touch at my side. Bee couldn't look up from her own work, but I saw her eyes slide over to me, trying to assess the situation. A wave of furious red was making its way from her throat to her face, and I could only imagine the kinds of words she was holding back. Her bony elbow brushed against mine again, as if to remind me that she was still there.

Then, with agonising slowness, I felt the same guard move behind me again, brushing my shoulder and arm with his own as he gently deposited the boot back on the table in front of me.

"These boots," he said in a low, purring voce as he tapped the plastic bin containing all of my finished work. "Did you lace them?"

If I hadn't known what kind of punishment I'd get for it, I would have burst into tears. I felt more stupid and ashamed the longer I stood there, but I couldn't say anything. I couldn't move. My tongue had swelled up to twice it's usual size behind my clenched teeth. The thoughts buzzing around my head were light and edged with a strange milky quality. My eyes could barely focus now.

More snickers from behind us.

"The laces are all wrong," His other arm wrapped around my left side, until there wasn't an inch of his body that wasn't pressed up against mine. Something new rose in my throat, and it tasted strongly of acid.

The tables around us had gone completely quite and still.

My silence only egged him on. With no warning, he picked up the bin of boots and flipped it over, so dozens of boots scattered across the length of the table with a terrible amount of noise. Now everyone in the Factory was looking. Everyone saw me, thrust out into the light.

"Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, _wrong_!" he sang out. But they weren't. They were perfect. They were just boots. "Are you as deaf as you are dumb, girlie?"

And then, clear as day, loud as thunder, I heard Bee say. "That was my bin."

_No. Oh no._

I felt the soldier shift behind me, pull back in surprise. They always acted like that—surprised that we remembered how to use words, and use them against them.

"What did you say?" he barked.

I could see the insult rising on her lips. She was rolling it around on her tongue like a piece of candy. "You heard me. Or did inhaling that polish kill off whatever helpless brain cells you had left rattling around that fat skull of yours?"

My voice was locked away behind layers of caution and fear. Bee was brave—so, so brave—but she did this way too often. She stood up for me, and I shrunk back in fear. I was betraying her. Hanging her out to dry. And I was too much of a fucking coward to fight my own fights.

The right side of the guy's lips inched up, turning a grim line into a mocking smirk. "We've got a lively one here, now don't we?"

_Come on. Come on Katy. _It was all there on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn't force the words to come out. I wasn't like her.

But I wanted to be. More than anything, I wanted to be that brave.

For a brief moment, our eyes locked. She read my face easily, and her shoulders squared. Behind her, Ivy's jaw was slack in complete horror. The soldier stepped forward and took Bee's arm, yanking her away from the table, and from me.

_Turn around_, I begged. Her tousled bond hair bobbed with each step, rising above the shoulders of the guards escorting her out. _Turn around._ I needed her to see how sorry I was, to understand the clenching in my chest and the nausea in my stomach had nothing to do with the fever. Every single desperate thought that ran through my head made me feel sick with disgust. the eyes that had been on me lifted two by two, and the soldier never came back to finish his personal brand of torment. There was no one left to see me cry; I had learned to do it silently, without any fuss, years ago. They had no reason to so much as look my way again. I was back in the long shadow Bee had left behind. I glanced over at Ivy from time to time, seeing tears streak silently down her cheeks to mirror my own.

The punishment for speaking out of turn was a day's worth of isolation, chained up in a sickly cell that was climate controlled. I'd seen kids sitting in a mound of artificial snow, blue in the face without a single blanket to cover them. Unsurprisingly, the punishment for talking back to a guard or lab coat was the same, only you weren't given food and, sometimes, not even water.

The punishment for a repeat offense was something so terrible Bee wouldn't—or couldn't—talk about it when she returned to the hub the next night. She came in, wet and shaking, looking like she'd been through hell and back. I slid off my bunk and was on my feet, rushing to her side, before she had even made it completely through the door.

My hand slipped around her arm, but she pulled away, her jaw clenched in a way that made her look like a rabid pitbull. Her cheeks and nose had been wind-whipped to a bright red, and the cuts and bruises she sported seemed to be small. Her eyes weren't red or swollen like mine. There was a subtle limp to her walk, maybe, but I knew the visible damage was only the start.

"Bee," I said, hating the way my voice shook. She didn't stop or even look at me until we were by our bunks, surrounded by the others, who watched her with bated breath.

"Say something, please." I begged.

"It's okay." Bee's voice was low and rough, like she hadn't used it for days.

"You shouldn't have—"

Her head tipped back, eyes closed as she faced the ceiling. The ugly artificial lights made her skin look translucent; waxy and worn.

"You're right," she said finally. "I shouldn't have." She drew in a shuddering breath. "But then, what would have happened to you? You would have just stood there, and let him do _that_, and you wouldn't have done a thing to stop him."

And then she was looking at me, and all I wanted was for her to turn away again. Her eyes flashed, darker than I had ever seen them before.

"They can say those awful things, _do_ awful things, hurt you any way they like, but you never fight back—and I know, Blue, _I know_, that's just how you are, but sometimes I wonder if you ever care. Why can't you stand up for yourself, just once?"

Her voice was barely above a whisper, but the ragged quality of it made me think she either wanted to scream or burst out into hysterical tears. Which scared me the very most of all, because Bee wasn't one for hysterics. I glanced down to where her hands were tugging at the edges of her shorts, so fast and frantic I almost didn't see the angry red marks that circled her wrists.

"Bee I—"

"I want—" She swallowed, hard. "I want to be alone. Just for a while."

Alone wasn't something we could achieve in the hub, but we understood. Bee retreated to the farthest left bunk, across from the bathroom, while the rest of us crowded to the other side. She slipped under the covers—back to us—mere seconds before the lights went out.

I was trembling with a bone-deep hate for myself as I trudged to a bed by the doorway. But I thought, then, that if I could just explain, tell her how much it pained me to keep silent, she wouldn't hate me. She would know that the last thing—the absolute last thing—I ever wanted was for her to be hurt because of me. I loved her. More than anything, and against every single odd, I loved her like family. And seeing her beaten and close to breaking, I wanted to curl up into a ball and simply cease to exist.

Later, the creak of bed springs woke me from the half-sleep I was slipping into. In the dark, I saw Bee's tall silhouette hobble slowly to the bunk next to mine, her limp most definitely a limp now. Speechless sat up, pulling the covers back and scooting to the side to give her room. She climbed in, and I watched through slit eyelids and Speech curled her tightly against his chest. He'd done the same thing with Ivy, and Nightmare, and once or twice with me when painful memories jarred me from sleep. But for some reason, I felt like I was intruding on something exceedingly intimate, something that wasn't meant to be seen.

I closed my eyes, tried desperately to sleep.

Once I heard Bee's muffled sobs and sniffles, I knew sleep wasn't coming any time soon.

* * *

**Whew, that was intense. Just so you know, I wrote this entire chapter today—and actively forgot to proof read—so please to be ignoring all my terrible grammar. I'll fix it tomorrow, swearies.  
****So, the reason I procrastinated so very much is because Percy Jackson has been compressing my skull. Rereading the whole series has been an emotional ol' journey, and sweet baby Christ in crutches…I'm not ready for Blood of Olympus. I don't want it all to end.  
****Any of you having similar existential problems? Leave a review lettin' me know!  
****Or, y'know, a review of this chapter, lettin' me know whatcha think on that end…either's good.**

**One last thing:**

**SOME COMMENT COMMENTARY!**

**sass-mistress-lucifer:** I…I don't…wow! Honestly darling, you're making me blush :3 As for all your inquiries…no spoilers? But sincerely, thank you for your review. It made my day!  
**hyourin-kusabana: **thank you kindly!  
**Guest: **oopsies…well, I hope it gets clearer soon. I'm sorry if this is a little hard to follow, but I pinkie promise that it'll all come together soon!  
**piggythelaw: **yeah…my brainspace my have delved a little dark there…oops  
**martianluvswolf33: **sorry if I'm depressing you :3 Hope you stick around long enough for the happy bits to happen!  
**Meridianpony: **Holy…I don't know what else so say but thank you! You're wonderful!  
**Anarchy ensues: **danke schon. And look, I did it!

**Just wanted to reply a lil' bit. Anywhoosies, hope you enjoyed, maybe leave a review if you did, and I'll see ya next week!**

**Bai!**


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